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View Full Version : U.S. Post Office's plan to increase mail used by youth



CathyA
9-28-11, 1:16pm
This sounds so silly to me. The post office is going to start making stamps of celebrities that young people like, in the hopes of drawing kids back to using mail.
Is that silly or what?

kally
9-28-11, 1:51pm
don't think it will work.

creaker
9-28-11, 3:04pm
I doubt it - kids don't even use email these days

reader99
9-28-11, 7:56pm
Maybe to stamp collecting, but even I almost never mail anything, and I'm 56.

CathyA
9-28-11, 7:59pm
From the looks of it at our house, what's keeping the USPS alive is the junk mail.

rosarugosa
9-28-11, 8:37pm
What a total waste of effort. Since I've started paying bills online, I don't mail much either, and I'm much older than the target audience. I do still send cards though.

creaker
9-28-11, 11:00pm
From the looks of it at our house, what's keeping the USPS alive is the junk mail.

It's also strangling USPS - like Saturday delivery. USPS wants to stop it, but lobbyists in Congress say no - because the people they work for want their junk mail showing up on Saturday right before people go weekend shopping.

Junk mail is obviously not paying the bills at USPS - but they don't have ability to set prices.

bekkilyn
9-29-11, 12:43pm
I wish I could automatically refuse all mail except Netflix and Amazon. :)

H-work
9-29-11, 12:55pm
We still use mail for bills. I guess I don't feel comfortable paying online for some things, and our utilities don't have online payment yet.

I use media mail a lot. I get most of my books from amazon sellers, so those come media mail. And often pass books back and forth to other homeschoolers, using media mail.

I'm all for the PO greatly reducing delivery days, but it seems like they won't consider it.

CathyA
9-29-11, 1:15pm
I LOVE online bill pay! It saves so much time and hassle.

ApatheticNoMore
9-29-11, 2:22pm
It seems to me if the post office reduced delivery days, they would probably lose some of the big customers they have left (Amazon) - and I would hate that because I love Amazon but I hate UPS and Fed Ex. So I'm not sure it's exactly the brightest business decision in the world for the post office to cut days (at least for packages, the rest of the stuff can wait). I use the postal service for bills, financial statements, Amazon and any other online shopping that ships through USPS (I prefer to shop at places that do).

Aqua Blue
9-29-11, 4:14pm
One thing I wonder about is if something would take out the satellites we would come to a stand still, right? None of the on line bill paying would work if I understand correctly. My understanding is that currently most of our satellites are maintained by Russia so we really don't have control of them.

Also, my understanding is that the PO has no controll over doing things to manage their business, ie raising rates, closing smaller post offices etc, that all has to be done by congress. So as I see it they have the worse of both worlds. My understanding is that they must prepay their retirement, but that money is not set aside for their retirement, but goes into the general fund. No other government agency has to do that, and no private agency has to do that. They apparently have kept up with that until this year. I am all for controlling costs in government, but I think this is a tar baby for all of the other things they don't want to address

catherine
9-29-11, 4:35pm
Boy, I'd love to do the market research for that one. My first impression is, that's ridiculous. I have a hard time believing that Justin Bieber on a stamp is going to motivate kids to write a letter v. an email.

redfox
9-29-11, 4:45pm
Who buys the stamps in a household? Our kids never did! This is goofy, 20th century thinking, IMHO.

pcooley
9-29-11, 6:49pm
I write a fair number of letters, (I'm 45 and have never taken to email for personal/family communication), but I have to say it is not because of an attractive selection of stamps. Fun stamps are great, and I buy them, but I would still write my family even if the stamps were dull.

KayLR
9-29-11, 7:57pm
Sounds like a last desperate gasp to me.

iris lily
9-29-11, 9:10pm
Remind me again why big gubmnet services is a smart deal. Clearly, this thing needs to be chopped into a mangeable size. The bloated organization will not allow itself to reduce to the level it should be, to the level that has genuine demand. Remind me, again. Yes, I know that the USPO is technically not a government funded organization.

Marianne
9-30-11, 7:15am
Do some of these kids even know how to address an envelope?
Sadly, we're losing our closest post office soon. I love online billing, auto draft on recurring bills. But I still have a couple that I have to snail mail.

jp1
10-2-11, 8:08pm
Just as amtrak is forced by congress to run fabulously unprofitable routes because they all go through some congressperson's district, the post office is forced to continue providing unprofitable services like cheap priced junk mail rates. It's a wonder they even come close to breaking even. And if they didn't have to fund their pension at a level FAR beyond what any private company does, they'd be breaking even now and wouldn't have to come up with absurd ideas like special stamps to entice young people to mail things.

The reality, though, is that the future is not in snail mailed letters, it's in package delivery. Focusing on letters and stamps will result in as much success as Smith Corona's failure to revamp their product lineup to effectively compete with PC's and all the new products that have come along in the last 25 years did for them.